Five time-saving tips for running a small business when you have kids
Juggling the hats of a small business owner and a parent calls for organisation, patience and the clever use of automation and tools.
It’s not easy running a business or freelance career and raising a family. Both require your energy, attention, time, creativity and patience – something that isn’t always in ample supply!
To help you, we’ve put together five tips that can help save you time and keep you sane!
1) Master your mornings
If you can, try to rise before your kids. An early start gives you a jump on emails and planning with the peace only dawn can offer. Being consistent here can also help with your sleep.
Once up, you can plan out your day, prioritizing tasks so when life turns up the volume, you’re ready to balance business and family with ease.
If you’re not a naturally organized person, making the most of time management tools and project management platforms will ensure that you’ve got a clear picture of what you need to tackle the moment you jump out of bed each morning.
2) Speed up repetitive tasks, such as photo editing, using AI tools
Accelerating mundane yet necessary professional tasks with the help of technology can help maximize your efficiency – particularly for the likes of photo editing. Imagine cutting down hours into minutes, revolutionizing photo editing with AI that fine tunes colors and crops with a click versus painstaking adjustments.
Time once dedicated to manual tweaks can now be reallocated to innovative strategies or playful afternoons, both of which are equally priceless. So choose an AI tool that works with your existing tools (Zapier can help connect most tools that don’t otherwise ‘speak to each other’) and automate what you can – leaving you more time to spend with your family.
3) Synchronize your scheduling with your kids’ routines
The more you can synchronize your business schedule to your children’s rhythms, the smoother your days (and nights) will be. Where you can, schedule important calls or client meetings during school hours or nap times. If your children are young, you can take them out to the park or a walk in the morning, and buy yourself some work time in the afternoon when they’re happy to play or watch TV.
If you’re a morning person, plan tasks that you need peace and quiet for early in the morning, before your kids wake. Or, if you’re an owl, you might find it preferable to do these when they’ve gone to bed at night.
This isn’t just savvy time management; it’s understanding the ebbs and flows of your unique family dynamic and making it work for you.
4) Delegate where you can
You don’t need to bear the burden of parenting and running a business alone; there are team of people you can enlist to help make things more easy for you. You just need to know who to ask.
If you have a partner, you can divide and conquer with parenting. You can take the kids for a couple of hours, giving them time to take care of their tasks, and then swap over. Or, if your partner works in the week, you can ask for some free time at the weekend to catch up with your work.
If you have friends who are also freelancer or business owners and parents, you can share childcare swaps. So you have all your kids for one morning or afternoon, and they reciprocate the next.
There are also people you can enlist to help you run your business, such as a social media manger, VA, designer and more. Identify tasks that are central to running your business but that you aren’t good at, don’t enjoy, or that eat up too much of your time. Then see if it is cost-effective to outsource these tasks to someone else.
The key thing to remember is that you don’t need to struggle on alone. Look at the people you have around you (and people you could have around you) and find ways you can get support and practical help from them when you need it.
5) Batch tasks for greater efficiency
Batching similar tasks can help you get munch more done in far less time. It’s about grouping comparable duties – think paperwork, manufacturing, client follow-ups – and tackling them in dedicated time slots. This isn’t just multitasking, which can actually be bad for you; it’s rhythmically aligning tasks to amplify focus and tempo.
By batching, you cut down on the mental energy of constantly switching gears. Instead, you can dig deep into one task at a time, boosting your efficiency. Take a look at focus blocks for a structure for getting in flow.
Save time as a parentpreneur
In life, where business and family are both demanding of your attention, these tips can work away behind the scenes to ensure that you don’t end up burning out and dropping the ball.
Stick to our suggestions, and you’ll find that you’re not only managing, but thriving in this dual-role, and loving every minute of it. Entrepreneur and doting parent really don’t have to be mutually exclusive roles!
